Electronic messaging has become one of the dominate forms for communicating messages. For example, many people utilize email programs, such as Yahoo! Mail®, to send messages and attachments. Electronic messaging has enabled individuals around the world to communicate with one another in nearly real-time. Other forms of electronics messaging, besides email, exist as well. For example, Internet message programs, such as Yahoo! Messenger®, enable individuals to “chat” with one another. Mobile devices, such as cellular telephones, are also often utilized to send electronics messages, such as photos, videos, SMS messages or email messages.
To utilize a typical messaging device, a sender of a communication typically specifies an intended recipient. For example, the sender may specify email addresses associated with the various intended recipients of the communication in a “To” field of an email program. However, in some cases, the email address of an intended recipient may not be known. To overcome this problem, some messaging systems predict the intended recipient via some form of string analysis. This typically involves searching through a personal directory that resides on the messaging device for individuals with names that match the characters in the string or text that the sender is entering. In the ideal situation, the list of potential recipients decreases as more and more characters are entered, until the list has been narrowed down to a single individual. Once identified, a token associated with the individual may be automatically entered. A token is a form of unique identifying data associated with an individual. For example, a token may correspond to an email address, a phone number, and/or an SMS address.
One problem with existing messaging devices and the messaging systems within which they operate is that they are unable to distinguish between different individuals with the same name. For example, two individuals may have the name John Smith. In this case, the sender would need to know the specific token associated with the correct John Smith, so as to send a communication to the correct John Smith.
In other instances, the sender may select what the sender thinks is the correct recipient when in reality the communication is intended for another. For example, the sender may address an email to Joe Smith, but may inadvertently attach a document addressed to John Smith. The question in this case becomes: Did the sender direct the message to the correct recipient or was the wrong document attached to the message?